Guitar Music From The 16th - 18th Century

This is a reprint of 19 articles written by Ian Gammie between 1982 to 1984 for the now defunct publication GUITAR Magazine. These were commissioned by the editor George Clinton to introduce guitar players to the repertoire, history and development of the four- and five-course guitars. The purpose was to provide an outline for players who had limited knowledge of their instrument's early history and also to examine the problems of transcribing music from the historical re-entrant tunings to make a performing version on the modern guitar. There are copious music examples and detailed text in the 52 pages. Though much research has been done since the 1980s in this area of guitar history, the articles still stand as a highly useful introduction to the subject. The original publications in the magazine had numerous misprints and problems with layout presentation (beyond the control of the writer) and these have been corrected, including improved clarity of the facsimile examples.